Colonic Cribriform Carcinoma, a Morphologic Pattern Associated With Low Survival

Abstract

Colorectal carcinoma is one of the most common cancers in the human body. Colorectal carcinoma is a heterogeneous disease with variegated morphological patterns; some have shown themselves to have prognostic value. The World Health Organization classification recognizes many histological variants associated with adverse prognostic factors, one is the cribriform colonic carcinoma (CCC). In this work, we analyzed 18 cases of CCC compared with 228 conventional adenocarcinomas of colon, with the hypotheses that CCC compared with non-CCC have worse prognosis and decreased overall survival. CCC represent 7.3% of all colonic adenocarcinomas in this series, it presents in a median age of 56.3 years, all cases are in clinical stage III and IV, all invade subserosal adipose tissues or serosa, 90% have >5 positive lymph nodes and 89% have lymphovascular invasion. These known adverse prognostic factors reflect a lower 5-year survival, stage by stage, than conventional intestinal-type adenocarcinoma (56.8% vs 83.3%, P = .035). Cribriform carcinoma is a morphologic pattern that is underrecognized; in this work, we demonstrate its association with low survival, extensive lymphovascular invasion, and extensive lymph node metastasis, strong indicators of aggressive disease. Their proper recognition is mandatory to increase the number of cases and series to support our findings and include it in the current classifications.